Individuals or customers frequently purchase or order products or items for certain applications or uses. For example, an individual may order customized printed products such as brochures and business cards associated with a business. Conventionally, individuals may use tools such as graphic design software (e.g., Adobe® InDesign) or online design studios to customize the designs to be applied to certain products. These tools typically utilize predefined templates having certain design elements positioned at default locations in the templates.
An individual may often need to design front and back portions of products. For example, for products such as business cards, an individual may desire to design the front portion of a business card to include the name of the business and contact information, and the back portion of the business card to include a graphic representing the business. Conventional tools typically provide a dedicated canvas to each of the front and back portions. For example, as shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, an individual using an exemplary tool 200 (i.e., Adobe® InDesign) may select tab 202 to design the front portion of business card 206 on dedicated canvas 210, and may select tab 212 to design the back portion of business card 206 on dedicated canvas 216. Particularly, as shown in FIG. 2A, within dedicated canvas 210, tool 200 provides a confined canvas 208 and a pane window 204. To design the front portion of business card 206, an individual may import a graphic object 209 into the confined canvas 208 by specifying a particular layer in the confined canvas 208 using the pane window 204. Similarly, as shown in FIG. 2B, to design the back portion of business card 206, an individual may be presented with a dedicated canvas 216 (i.e., different than dedicated canvas 210) to import the graphic object 209 into a confined canvas 214 by specifying a particular layer in the confined canvas 214 using the pane window 204.
There are several drawbacks of such conventional tools. Although tools may present a dedicated canvas (e.g., 210, 216), an individual is often limited to the much smaller confined canvas (e.g., 208, 214) within the dedicated canvas when designing a product. That is, the confined canvas (e.g., 208, 214) may represent areas in which the graphic objects or other objects are confined. The lack of additional design space to temporarily place design elements of a design (e.g., notes, graphics) may prevent an individual from effectively visualizing or manipulating the product throughout the design process. Further, the pane window 204 as a means to import a graphic object into the product is not user-friendly, in the sense that an individual may be required to perform a series of steps, such as (1) select the rectangular frame tool 211 on the left panel of tool 200 as shown in FIG. 2A, (2) position the rectangular frame in the confined canvas 208 to make a region to fit the graphic object, (3) import (e.g., “paste”) the graphic object, (4) find the layer in which the graphic object was imported using the pane window 204, and (5) adjust (e.g., resizing) the graphic object. Additionally, by providing separate canvases for front and back portions of a product, conventional tools 200 are not user-friendly, in the sense that an individually is unable to easily glean design elements of a design (e.g., notes, graphics) associated with one canvas (e.g., 210) while using another canvas (e.g., 216). That is, an individual may have to alternate in selecting tabs 202 and 212 several times to visualize or manipulate the product throughout the design process. The drawbacks described herein is time consuming and inefficient.
Accordingly, there is an opportunity for platforms and techniques to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks and effectively modify product designs and elements thereof.